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Frame Six

 The first line of the poem Frame Six by Cheswayo Mphansa, lingered with me for days. 

"These days I wake in the used light of someone’s spent life."

There are degrees of sadness and despair in those words for me. It brought back memories of time thankfully long past where these words could have been exactly what I sought to describe what I was living through. I wrote about my nights in a cold attic many years ago. If I had the words Mphansa does, I would have expressed it more memorably and without wasting any. His poem reminded of a blog by young person describing the wisdom of having lived thirty years. Lot of good insights there but the last line is the best - the days are long but the decades are short. This gets truer the longer you live I think. 

Just like that the 20s and 30s are over and if you had not been spending those long days thinking about the larger purpose of your life, suddenly you are left with far less intangible resources than you once had. I spent my 20s waging wars that I felt were worth fighting at the time - not concerned as much about what I would have to show for it at the end of my life. The wars were won to my satisfaction and I was also worn out. In hindsight that energy could have been diverted to much better end and by when that epiphany occurred I was no longer the person I was in my 20s - I did not have any of that fight left in me. 

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